The Cosmolabe – Moorcocks mind map

The Cosmolabe is an attempt to produce a crude map of the multiverse and thus negotiate a way through. They hope to discover a series of roads which will allow non-adepts to cross between the planes etc. I suspect this is a false hope, given the complex ‘magic’ involved. The Cosmolabe is a map of my mind. from Sf Signal

have a particular interest in the Cosmolabe (or Cosmolabes). Is it more than a model?

“Out there in those spaces between the worlds, those shadowed spaces, is another kind of matter which some call “cosmic storm clouds” and others name Antimatter or Dark Matter, which is the opposite of our own and different in every respect, the Ultimate Anti-Cosmos lurking within their environment just as ours lurks within theirs. Travelling in apparently opposite directions. In Balance, these two forces also echo a human ideal, a happy mean, constant life, but in Opposition they come to Non-Existence. Non-Existence is not exactly a loss of consciousness. Consciousness without effect is the soul’s worst hell. To watch and do nothing. Nothing at all. For all eternity.” (pg 248)
motherlondonMM: The Cosmolabe is an attempt to produce a crude map of the multiverse and thus negotiate a way through. They hope to discover a series of roads which will allow non-adepts to cross between the planes etc. I suspect this is a false hope, given the complex ‘magic’ involved. The Cosmolabe is a map of my mind.

LK: You/Michael (the character) are not so much a non-adept as one attuned to the Cosmolabe but not yet adept. The Cosmolabe seems to act as a teacher/enabler, drawing people like the Michael character just over the edge enough to enable them, making it truly a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. Is this one of the central conflicts of the series, the destiny of the Cosmolabe?